Computer and software users have grown accustomed to user-friendly software applications that help them write, calculate, organize, prepare presentations, send and receive electronic mail, make music, and the like. For example, modem electronic word processing applications allow users to prepare a variety of useful documents. Modem spreadsheet applications allow users to enter, manipulate, and organize data. Modem electronic slide presentation applications allow users to create a variety of slide presentations containing text, pictures, data or other useful objects. Modem database applications allow users to store, organize and exchange large amounts of data.
Documents created by such applications typically retain a good deal of value after their initial use. Such documents may be reused entirely, or portions of such documents may be used in other documents. The reuse of entire documents or portions of documents is a common and valuable practice by many information workers who wish to save time and make their work more efficient by reusing previous work product. Unfortunately, reuse of individual or groups of slide presentation application slides is often difficult and cumbersome. Finding a particular slide from a given presentation may require a user to open several presentation documents and peruse all slides contained in the open documents until a desired slide is found. If a desired slide is located, use of the slide is often difficult. A user may be forced to leave her open slide presentation, look for the desired presentation file, open a located file, look for a specific slide, copy the specific slide, and then return to her slide presentation to paste the copied slide. This process is tedious and time consuming.
In addition, after a user has located and has used a given slide from a slide presentation, a problem often arises around maintenance of the slide. For example, if a side used by the user is updated with new data or information after the user copies the slide, the user will have no way of knowing she should update the slide. For another example, if the original slide contained an error that was later discovered and corrected by the slide author or editor, the user has no way of knowing of the error or of the correction unless she is contacted regarding the slide correction or unless she discovers and corrects the error independently.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.